Oops. The Niche I Selected Is Bad, and Here’s Why

In my niche site duel with Tyrone Shum, I started my making a mistake. Oops! Find out what happened and how I fixed it.

Pat FlynnAugust 20, 2010

Before anything, I want to say this:

I’m not an expert at niche sites. Tyrone Shum, my challenger for this little competition, is not an expert either. We’re both fairly brand new to the niche site scene, so we’re going to make mistakes. The reason why we’re making this challenge public is to show you what those mistakes are, so you don’t do them yourself.

I just wanted to make that clear here in the beginning stages of our duel.

Now that I’ve said that, I’ve already made a mistake that I’m happy to share with you, because there’s a big lesson that goes along with it.

The niche I had originally selected for the competition, cop training (as shown in this niche selection process post), is not a good niche to get into. The process I used to get to that point was good – that’s the way most people would say it should be done, however I got all wide-eyed and excited when I saw the initial numbers and an open domain name, that I failed to do the further research required to make sure it was actually a good niche.

To sum it all up, the traffic and search numbers I saw for cop training were skewed because there are other terms that have the words cop training that are being searched for too. Usually, this is always the case and is totally fine because those other terms are terms related to that niche, however in my case, I was very unfortunate because those other keywords were totally unrelated.

It turns out, there’s this UFC fighter named Mirko Cro Cop, who also has his own training regiment. So, when I saw the numbers for “cop training” in Market Samurai, [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.] I was actually seeing search numbers and traffic for “Cro Cop Training”, and “Mirko Cro Cop Training” too.

Totally unfortunate, but it happened, and it can happen to you too. So the big lesson here is that when you find good keywords that meet your criteria, don’t stop there. Perform further research and figure out the other phrases that people are searching for that include those keywords that you want to target.

Here is a video I made for you that shows exactly what happened, why I didn’t catch this in the first place, and how you can use Market Samurai to see what those other terms are so you don’t make the same mistake:

(A special thanks to Christian, who commented on the last post and brought this to my attention.)

So now, I’m targeting a new niche, which has numbers that look much better than cop training did. Here are some screenshots from Market Samurai for my new niche, Security Guard Training, which I found using the same initial keyword theme, police training.

SEO Competition

Traffic and Search

Broad Match

Exact Match (this shows numbers based on people searching for the exact keyword phrase, nothing more)

As you can see, cop training dropped off a lot, while security guard training still has a large number of people searching and clicking through for that exact term daily.

There are more competing pages, but because there’s a little bit more room in the top 10 in Google, the number of competing pages doesn’t really matter.

I’m actually glad this whole ordeal happened, not just because I feel like I have a better niche in my hands now, but because hopefully you learned something from it.

I did, and I’m glad I didn’t create an entire site around cop training, only to find out later that this is the reason why no one was interested in it.

Now I’m a little behind in the competition – Tyrone already has his site up with some content on it (thanks to his outsourcing team), but I’m confident I can catch up, even though it’s just me.

I’ve already contacted Bluehost and they kindly allowed me to cancel by initial purchase of CopTraining.net and pickup a new domain for Security Guard Training that isn’t an exact match, but it’s close. I’ll reveal that in the next installment. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for Bluehost.]

P.S. I created this video almost exactly 1 year ago, and it’s amazing to listen to how much I’ve improved on the microphone since then. If you’ve listened to my podcasts, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Funny though, the phrase-to-broad match ratio in Market Samurai says 67% for cop training which should mean that there are fairly enough phrase searches. I guess the exact searches should be taken into full consideration

Theres a new tool on the market that I’ve started to use instead of Market Samurai. Its called SECockpit. With it, you don’t have to worry about the phrase to broad match ratio any more, plus its about 400x faster than MS because its a cloud based app.

Thanks for involving us in this entire process, mistakes and all, Pat. This research can certainly be a bit tricky….and, with each day, I’m learning something new about how market samurai works.

P.s. Kudos to Christian for picking up on the mistake. That’s why it’s so awesome to have a community of people here…even when it means spotting a mistake (and, saving you potentially hours of wasted time and resources)

Checked out your site…. interesting reading. I got out of the Navy a few months before 9/11 and really didn’t think about flying for a military contractor.

What do you think the job environment will be like once the wars wind down?

Mike

Let battle commence!

It’s nice to see the mistakes and see that your not always a hyperdrive ninja, that you have the same stumbling blocks that we all face.

I sincerely hope that with your advice, that more of us can help eachother earn a living online for the benefit of all 🙂

Im still teetering on the edge of trying this stuf fout for myself but more research is required first before I take that leap of faith. That and the prospect of possibly joining the internetbusinessacademy as you and many others have recommended it highly.

Though being in the UK I dont know if I would gain the same benefit as those in California etc.

Best of luck with the lil niche battle and thanks for your honesty, Pat.

Pat, I say cut your losses on this one and focus on what you do best! Info blogs, podcasts, vids etc which provide value to people…. I hope it leads you to a pot of gold for you but am fearing the worst with this one:)

Ditto Karen. I think Pat’s on to something here…guess time will tell though 🙂

Pat

Annabel – I am creating videos and posting information on the blog…THIS blog. I think I’m providing a lot of value to my readers here, at least it seems that way based on everyone responses so far. This isn’t about making tons of money here. Although that would be nice, its about what I learn along the way and what I can pass along to you and everyone else. I hope that makes sense.

And about my niche site, I’m planning on providing value there as well. And even if it doesn’t make any money at all, I still think it will be worth the effort.

Hi Pat, well, looks as if I don’t understand it properly! Oh yes, I know you’re providing huge value, it’s amazing. You’re a star in my book. I guess re the niche site it’s a good experiment and if you’re not worried if it ever makes money you have nothing to lose.

I admire your ability to juggle all these diff blogs. Just the one is keeping me busy and now I have a major client too which will severly curtail my blogging activities.

If you don’t see me around for a while that’s why but never fear, I’ll be back and look forward to seeing what lessons we can learn from all your activities:) Good luck!

Rich

Gotta agree with yah on this Pat, (sorry Annabel). MASSIVE value would be more accurate. Thanks Pat for helping others (like myself) who do NOT have the income to pay for this kind of info. CUDO’s to Pat…

I appreciate that you’re willing to admit your mistake and share the details with everyone. I think I like your new niche more, anyway. If I were looking for training (and choosing between cop or security guard), I would probably be more likely to think that I can find security guard training information online. Cop training seems a little bit more intense – something where you’d probably be looking for a more “official” source. I guess that’s my long-winded way of saying that I think “security guard training” seems more commercially viable for this niche project.

Pat – I love following you in this process. Your transparency is so refreshing! I recently downloaded the trial version of Market Samurai and went through the ropes to learn how to use it effectively and begin my niche research – and even with such a fantastic program (it really is great), I found it to be a long, grueling process before I stumbled onto my niche. But well worth that sense of satisfaction when you find it.

Pat–It might be better to use phrase match to check out the lay of the land then go to exact for specific info about your chosen kw.

I actually think cop training still might be the better niche but we’ll see as time progresses. Just wondering, when you say security guard training do you mean “mall cop”, corporate security, military contractors, bodyguards or all of the above?

I believe your mistake here has help us to reduce one potential mistake that we will make next time if we are going to chose a niche sites. I think thats cool. I really love your open minded way of approaching this challenge. It will be a bit of selfish side of me hoping that the challenge last longer so that we can learn more about your approach.

Good to see that not only are you guys taking this little duel seriously but also that you are being transparent on the whole process. For example, you could have left out that cop training wasn’t profitable as you thought and just posted on the security training keywords.

Following along nicely so far,

Dwight

chaz

Ditto Dwight… I really apprecieate their transparency making this a great learning experience.

pinkstudio

Hello Pat,
I’ve discovered your blog for a month or something now. It’s full of quality information and I want to thank you for that.
I’m very interested in niche site and would like to try my own. I don’t know anything about web design or development (for now) and can’t afford to outsource it (for now). My question is : do you think it is possible to monetize a niche site build on a blog like the ones in blogspot? Or would it be wiser to wait to learn the skills to build an actual website from scratch?
I’m asking this because there is a link in this post on “how to set up a wordpress blog in less than 4 minutes”. This point is somewhat confusing to me….
Thank you very much.

Once again, this is great stuff. How lucky to catch it now and not months from now! I wouldn’t have been so lucky. Looking forward to the next post.

Jody

Pat, I’m curious and was wondering about the coptraining.net domain name that you went with. Would it have been just as acceptable if you would have modified the .com by making it something like coptraining101.com or coptrainingvideos.com or something similar? Love your site too, great work!!

Jody

Just to clarify, I did see that the niche changed; however I’m wondering about the original domain selection process.

Pat

Hey Jody – I think an exact match with a .net or .org is worth more, or is more authoritative than a .com with other letters. Each individual letter is calculated into the overall algorithm, so I hear. Plus, the two you mention would narrow down what you could talk about in your site – 101 meaning for beginners only (what if I wanted to teach advanced stuff?), and videos would have to utilize videos primarily, which could be good but could also be difficult. I hope you understand what I mean!

Cheers!

Jody

Thanks for responding! This changes my perspective a bit for two niches that I want to get started with for the Great Niche Challenge of 2010. I probably would have erred on both suggestions. I’m going to take a closer look at what’s available now. Wish me luck!

I love bluehost they saved me so many times in the past, I had bought a domain name once @ 11 pm (FYI Bad Idea!) and the main keyword in the domain name was misspelled. I called them up the next day and the did the same thing for me as well.

Happy to hear that you got a solid niche now, I’m Rooting for you to win! Good luck!

Speaking of microphones. Any suggestions for what to use? Do you wear headphones while you record to hear youself?

Pat

I use a Heil PR-40 – it’s recommended by most of the top podcasters I know. It’s not a USB mic though, so you have to get a mixer for it, but it sounds awesome.

When I wear my headphone on one side, sort of like a DJ. This is so I can hear myself talk, but not through the headphones, but with my free ear. I don’t know why – it just feels more comfortable this way.

Wow yeah it’s a good thing you didn’t get too far along with cop training then. Could have been disappointing.

I made several similar mistakes when I first started out with affiliate marketing. I chose niches that were pretty much teen related and it turned out that they were happy to visit but just didn’t spend any money.

I also did some review sites for products that absolutely tanked with affiliate marketing. Fortunately, I was able to turn it around by using Amazon links. Some of those still make me reasonable money.

To Stephen B. – I have a really nice mic that is USB-based (a lot of condenser mics need a mixing board to plug in). It’s an Audio-Technica AT2020 and it really sounds superb.

I’m glad you caught the mistake before you went through with the niche. Hopefully this one turns out better for you.

Thanks for the heads up, and I’ll most certainly do my research before diving into any niche. In fact, I created a niche myself several months ago, though put it on hold for a while while I work on my blog.

This is why I always choose the exact dropdown in Market Samurai and always do keyword research on the keyword I provisionally chose. I made a similar mistake a year or so back and spent a long time trying to rank for a keyword that wasn’t relevant.

By the way, the security guard site looks great (loving the logo) and I have no doubt you’ll succeed with this case study based off the weak competition and your skills. I’m doing a case study myself for a product and I love this stuff so much that I don’t actually like to outsource it!

Tyrone has some tough competition and I think you might have the edge as far as a profitable niche goes.

chaz

Great catch! Pat… do you think it is ok to use the word “blog” or “forum” in your website name? Also, what is the maximum amount of charcters you would use in a website name? Thanks!!!

chaz

clarification… is it ok to use the word “blog” or “forum” in your domain name? Also, what is the maximum amount of characters you would use in a domain name?

I have to say that market samurai looks pretty powerful. And Pat thanks for the vids. Sometimes we get so excited when we stumble on a niche that things get a little blurry and we miss some of the details.

That was close! Good thing this was caught very early on before you put a lot of work into it. Tragedy averted! Glad you shared this with us as we can all learn from your mistake. I look forward to seeing your progress and learning right along with you. I’m rooting for ya! I have no doubt you’ll be able to make up for lost time.

Mistakes happen and they may seem like failures but they are actually an opportunity for success. This just shows how humble you are, you are open, you listen to everybody and change if it’s the best and right thing to do. I really wish you all the best!

Thanks for sharing all – even the mistakes. And good for you for being able to recognize it and make the necessary changes. Sometimes it is difficult to admit we were wrong and change strategies, especially if you’ve already invested time and money.

I’m building my own niche sites too. I currently on my 2nd one and I have to say they are really fun to play around with. Keyword research really plays a huge part in building niche sites.

Another thing to take note is the niche you are going into. I try to find niches that I have passion in to make it fun for me. What isn’t fun will bore you down in the long run. That is something that I picked up from building my first niche site.

Cheers,
Vincent

Daniel

Hey, Pat

I wonder if you have any idea of what product you’re going to be selling in that website of yours. Maybe I’m getting ahead of your planning process, but I think one of the main differences between your approach and Tyrone’s is that he has picked out a product already, while yours still remain unknown.

Well done Pat. I’m enjoying the updates on the challenge. I’m interested in the process you take to find a niche – at what point do you research the products available to sell? Before you select the niche or after?

I suppose it could happen to the best of us. Your right that it provided a nice learning lesson for everyone. I will now know to look into these keywords a little deeper. Thanks for helping us out with this process I am really enjoying this series of articles.

Good lesson here Pat I really like your site and Have been listening to your Pod Casts good stuff. I try and stick to Exact search results for myself and I want to participate in this little competition so I motivate myself to do the work I need!

I already put up a site and have some content on it now just for the link building! One thing I want to do is build up a good revenue via affiliate sales/ebook/adsense or selling direct advertising on the site and which ever one does the best really make it the primary focus on the site.

I also have aweber setup for the site and google feedburner so I can get subscribers to add more value to the website.

Right now the keyword phrase I am targeting has over 4,000 exact searches and the trends seem to very stable so I know my hard work will be more valuable.

Then after a few months sell the website on Flippa. I have had alot of success from selling sites on Flippa.

I am a full time internet marketer and doing smaller niche sites is a good way to start to getting passive income and then possibly selling the site for a lump sum.

We all get to make the mistake sometimes, not only that the internet is so dynamic that what you think would be the break for you would just change in a matter of minutes, thanks for sharing but I think the solution to some of this mistake is to blog from your passion rather than just because of the money…

Tommy V.

I just found your blog yesterday and I’m learning alot. I was watching the video on this post right then. Cro Cop is a nickname, his name is Mirko Filipovi?. He was a Croatian Cop and member of an elite Croatian anti-terrorist unit. Just some useless information for you. Thanks for everything that you are doing.

Hey Pat: I just watched over this video, and since you said you did the video a year ago, I went to your 4-minute blog expecting to see some slick, well built-out blog. I was thinking you were making all kinds of money from the blog by now. I was surprised to see you hadn’t done anything with the site yet! It sounds like a good opportunity to sell a product or ebook called the ‘4-minute blog’ Action Plan. Just an idea!

That Mir/Mirko Filipovic fight was a joke! Good thing Mir got a K.O. to save the battle.

Andre

Hi Pat,

I’m a new subscriber as of today. I found your podcast on iTunes when scrolling through the business section and I’m glad I decided to listen. I just wanted to say thanks for the podcast and for sharing your knowledge about building passive income online. I’m looking forward to participating in the community and to add my own insights once I start achieving some success. Keep up the great work.

Found a FREE keyword research tool online that might help avoid mistakes like this.

First, the tool is: You type in your keyword, and it gives a comparative (non-numeric) list of keywords with your keyword in it.

Second, go to Google and search on the search terms listed to see what’s getting returned. Before you even have the full keyword typed in, Google already starts to produce results. “cro ” yields the UFC fighter references.

Going back to the Wordstream tool, I simply click the “x” next to the word “cro” to eliminate that word from the results. To get the actual numbers, Wordstream wants your eMail address to mail them to you. (Sneaky eMail grabber!)

I really enjoy your podcasts on iTunes, which is how I found you, and I appreciate very much the info you share with everyone, like how you made a “mistake” with your niche. Your honesty and enthusiasm for helping others is simply amazing!
Richard

Hey Pat – thank you for making that mistake but most of all thank you for not having an ego to hide it. I would have made the same type mistake with my keyword selection and this has been extremely insightful because I’m a newbie!

I totally made the same mistake and didn’t even realize it! I’m so glad I stumbled across your site. I had one niche keyword with over 1500 SEOT and low competition. A few weeks after doing the heavy lifting of site setup/article creation/etc. I was still wondering where the hell my traffic was. After watching this, I went back and switched it to “exact” to find out it’s actually a 160 SEOT keyword. Funny thing is, I always export and compile all of my keyword research into a single excel file, and then sort as needed. The number was right there the whole time, I just never paid much attention to the SEOT (Exact) column! Thank you again!

I stumbled onto your podcast last week and this is my first visit to your site (specifically for niche duel as referred in podcast episode 15). This ‘mistake’ you posted just made me scrap half of the keywords I’ve short-listed as many of them were not related to my intended site(s).

Note that I’m absolutely a noob with all things web marketing so this duel series is an absolute goldmine for guys like me.

I just want to drop by and give you a big ‘thank you’ for all these info…

Regards,
Dave Tong

Orpheus

Hi Pat,
You’ve mentioned that the competiton for the term “security guard training” was high but you saw that there was still room in the top 10. Can you explain how you identify this? What is it that you saw in the top 10 that made you go ahead despite the high competition?

Frank

Pat, I don’t understand this phrase:
>There are more competing pages, but because there’s a little bit more room in the >top 10 in Google, the number of competing pages doesn’t really matter.

will you please explain?

Susan

I found you, and I am studying this intensively. I am a beginner and really want to work on this.

Hey Pat , Just following your 4 minute blog video I could do that in 4 minutes too!
I never thought creating a blogging website would be that easy.
Thanks to you many people like me will be able to deam of making something online!
Thanks again.

Mike

Hi Pat. Is there a way to get the info that Market Samurai provides – specifically the SEOT, PBR, and SEOC metrics that helped you to choose your niche – for free? (Even if it takes more time and work.)

I got a free trial of MS, but then I started working on a site and now the free trial is over.

Hey Pat I’m stopping to write you a message of thanks for the awesome content that you have provided so far in your duel. I think it’s a great thing. I’m a military wife and I know that the wives in my neighborhood will enjoy reading this as well. Thanks again Pat you’re the man! I know that I’m pretty late reading this but I can’t wait to finish to see how it ended.

Hi Pat,
This was another perfect video and I wrote down the main lesson of this mistake. It is very important for me. As a beginner I could make some of these mistakes but watch this video I will pay more attention!
Thank you for this great and useful information. I learn many things in your site. I am happy because i finally found the time and I decided to put this “training” in my schedule.
take care!

When you take a niche, do you only look at .net, .com or .org extensions?
What if they are not available but a .info, .biz or .eu is available.
Would you go for the exact domainname with the latter extensions or not the exact domainname (so with hq after is for example) but those first extensions?

Thanks for the answer!

Cassrina

Dear Pat, great inspiring story! I have follow your trail and found a niche about some recipe, when I check the competition in Market Samurai, it seems all 10 results are dominated by major food portal such as AllRecipe.com, MarthaStewart.com, eatingwell.com, wikihow, ehow and about.com. Is it easy for a dedicated small blog about the food be able to upbeat all and take the 1st position using your backlink strategy or you would say go find another pool to swim?

Cassrina – I did a little research and found you may have to find some very long-tail searches to break into a recipe site ranking. MyBestBites seems to come up all over the place as well as the other ones you mentioned. You may not be able to compete in a general recipe search, but maybe you have a speciality that you want to search for? For example, my girlfriend is amazing with pumpkin recipes. Maybe target a specific food or food type and start digging from there?

If you need help with your research methods, Tweet me – @eldamien. Happy to help anyone just starting out.

alpha

Hi all.
Does anyone have any experience in turning a successful blog on auto pilot, i.e. stop the blogging and turn it into a static website, maybe just occasional posts every couple months, and still continue with good page rank, good traffic, and good ebook sales? Please help…

Thibault

Hi Pat, first of all big congratulations on your blog, which provides very useful insights even years later! It doesn’t seem like you answer your comments (understandable since there are hundreds) but I still wanted to say that I tried the Market Samurai and unfortunately they do not provide the SEOC metrics any longer (those remain empty as well as other useful metrics) and it seems that they only work for BING search, not google. Do you (or somebody on here) think that Market Samurai is still a good technique to find niche concepts / analysis? It seems to me that this is not so relevant anymore. Are there any alternatives to this such as Keyword Planner from google? Thanks!

Shaun

Hey Thibault, thanks for highlighting it, but I think I will still give Market Samurai a try and then compare the results manually with other keyword search tool (like – Google Keyword Planner?). Anyways, if you want to do it manually definitely you can!

Find a software that generates tons of keyword for you.

Type the keyword in google with the quoted sign with either intitile or inphase(eg:intitle “keyword”/ inphase “keyword”), normally I use inphase as it shows more relevant result.

Before that, you need to install some feature on your browser
I don’t really remember what is it called, but one of them will be to determine the pagerank of the sites and domain. Next will be moz – open site explorer to give you details on domain authority and page authority

Once you targeted the correct niche, put the keyword in google again and then analyze each and every competitive site on google (1-10) as Pat says, we just want to be on the first page of google. You can analyse the site by visiting Moz – Open site explorer. You get details such as their backlinks, root domain links and so on.

And the best part is ALL THESE TECHNIQUE ARE FREE. They are just a bit more troublesome. (One segment that you can’t get if you are using free service of Moz – Open site explorer is that you can;t get to see their social metrics). Social metrics in some cases do significantly boost rankings in Google.

One problem that I am facing now is that I am still finding the best software to generate tons of keywords based on one keyword (which I think market samurai can do a great job!)

Hope my advise help though!

Gabe

You talk about tweaking your wordpress theme. What do you mean by that? Are you recoding?

Ornajoyce.wix.com/ornajoyce

Hi Pat, thank you so much for putting up this info- I am so super impressed at how easy it is- I am so in need of hand holding and this has totally calmed me and made me see the whole endeavour of blogging in a new light! Woohoo- here’s to everyone’s blogging success.

juel rahman

I have to say that market samurai looks pretty strong. And Pat lot thanks
for the vids. Sometimes we get so excited when we stumble on a niche
that things get a little blurry and we miss some of the details.

I’m thinking I may be having the same issue with one of my websites. There are a ton of searches for the terms each month (I’m using Google Keyword Planner) but we’ll see what happens.

Melee

Hi, in current trial version of Market Samurai I can’t see selection between broad and exact serach. So which one the programs uses? Also what is the minimum daily number of searches for site to be profitable?